


Repetitive patterns

by varevare (varebanos)



Category: DCU (Comics)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Future Fic, M/M, just mentioned though
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2014-06-22
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:13:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,216
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1829176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/varebanos/pseuds/varevare
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jason knew Damian catching him in the shower every other day meant something. What did it meant exactly, though, was a bit harder to guess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Repetitive patterns

**Author's Note:**

> Birthday gift for big bro!

Three is a pattern, or so they say. It made Jason wonder what it meant, the fourth time he stepped out of the bathroom to find Damian lounging in his apartment.  
  
"Did nobody ever tell you you shouldn’t smoke indoors?" Damian scrunched up his nose in disgust at the sight of a rather full ashtray.  
  
"Did nobody ever tell you you shouldn’t sneak into people’s houses without permission?" Jason snapped back, glad that he had put on a towel before going out. He missed the days where he could roam naked after a shower without having to hide from the prying eyes of the youngest Robin. His kind of brother, he assumed, too. He wasn’t sure of what happened to legal ties after dying, but if they broke somehow, they were broken twice by now.  
  
So, for the time being, Damian was just the brat that kept sneaking into his safehouses and apartments whenever he felt like eating something during patrol. Or so he explained him the third time Jason found him there.  
  
It only took two times to get Jason to wear a towel every time he walked outside the bathroom, though.  
  
"I wouldn’t sneak here if you could be bothered to lock the door properly." Damian dropped his cape on Jason’s bed -it was wet, of course it was- and stepped closer. "Are you done in the bathroom? I need a shower."  
  
"I locked the door."  
  
"A lock like that is just something between an insult and a challenge. I don’t know what were you expecting."  
  
"I don’t know either," Jason groaned, and stepped out of the door and into the messy bedroom, which had just gotten messier with Damian’s stuff on it. "What did you come here for?"  
  
The only answer he got was the bathroom door being slammed shut and the sound of the water running again.  
  
With a sigh, Jason kicked the cape to the floor and went to sleep. He was so tired he didn’t even hear Damian’s scream when the hot water ran out.  
  
-  
  
It was weirder when Jason started meeting Damian during their patrols. It was true that, different areas or not, chasing a suspect often made them break each other’s borders. Jason didn’t mind if it was Damian the one breaking them all that much. Of the whole bunch, he was the only one who wasn’t interested on lecturing Jason on his methods. Even the years under Batman’s guidance hadn’t changed his… alternative attitude regarding Jason’s crimefighting techniques. He would never go as far as to help him, of course, but Jason could sometimes appreciate the company.  
  
Still, twice a day was too much.  
  
"Again here?"  
  
"You’ve never complained before," Damian replied as he kicked the gun out of the mugger he had been chasing’s hand. Which, completly false. Jason complained, and often. "I just came to pick this scumhead up."  
  
"Pretty sure that word doesn’t exist." Jason lifted his free hand to rub his face, but the attempt was thwarted by the helmet. He immediately dropped it, hoping Damian hadn’t noticed. The kid would never let him live it down.  
  
"Whatever, Hood."  
  
Damian picked up the mugger after handcuffing him and carried him away. It was a ridiculous image, not because Damian was small -he hadn’t been small for years now- but because of how he didn’t seem to care about the other, still much bigger man attempts to break free.  
  
Jason chuckled and walked away. Maybe he could get used to that, too.  
  
-  
  
It wasn’t the image of Damian carrying away a fully grown up man without problem what made Jason realize the brat wasn’t really a brat anymore. After all, he was pretty sure that, with how the League trained his people, Damian would have been able to do the same thing the first time they met.  
  
No, it was the night Jason found him in a dark club that he could have sworn the brat should have been too young to get into, too close to crime alley for comfort. Of course, he wasn’t too young -he hadn’t bee for a while- but it still felt like a bucket of cold water.  
  
"I didn’t know this was your kind of club, kid," he almost said, but the words died in his throat when he saw the way another man leaned in to whisper someone on Damian’s ear.  
  
It looked wrong. It felt wrong, to see the preppy kid in just a shirt being told God-knows-what by someone who looked like the kind of guy Jason beat up in a daily basis.  
  
The tightness in his chest felt wrong just as well, but for different reasons that could surely wait to be examined later. It was funny, how had he never noticed it before, and all out of sudden it was enough of a reason to drag Damian out to the nearest bathroom when half a minute later a fight broke and the thug had more important things to do than mutter sweet nothings on Damian’s ear. Jason found hard to believe that anybody could have anything more important right there and then, but it gave him a chance to be alone with Damian so he wasn’t about to question it.  
  
"What do you think you’re doing here?"  
  
Damian, currently pressed againt a decrepit tile wall, didn’t take kindly to being dragged out of the club and the fight, and snarled at him.  
  
"This isn’t your territory, Todd, and in my free time I can do whatever I please."  
  
"Is this for a mission? You don’t even have any backup. What the hell, kid?"  
  
"There’s no mission! And just because you see me as a kid, it doesn’t mean everybody does." Damian finally pushed Jason back and straightened his way too seethrough shirt. "If you expected me to keep pining after you until I turned thirty you’re wrong."  
  
If his previous realization had been like someone turning on the lights, this one was someone punching the veil off his eyes. That someone being Damian, and that veil being the pattern that, despite being completely aware of, Jason had failed to interpret.  
  
"What do you mean pining?" he still managed to ask stupidly. As usual after receiving a direct blow to the face from Damian, his head was still spinning.  
  
"Just because you can’t take a hint-"  
  
"Stealing my food isn’t a hint!"  
  
"And trying to get in the shower with you isn’t either?"  
  
"How was I supossed to know you wanted to get in the shower with me?" Looking Damian’s face, Jason didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.  
  
"Do you think I try to sneak into Grayson’s bathroom like that?"  
  
In fact, Jason didn’t.  
  
In a way, it was good that he hadn’t realized until now, because that way he had managed to realize how much he wanted to kiss those lips before knowing how much those lips wanted to be kissed. He might have commited a terrible mistake otherwise, but now he wouldn’t.  
  
-  
  
When, ten minutes later, the guy who had been talking to Damian arrived into the bathroom to wash the blood off his mouth, he found them still kissing. With a curse, he left again. Probably to go back to the fight.  
  
Not that either Jason or Damian noticed.


End file.
